Nesting

A friend of mine asked me last week if I'd started nesting yet. I'd done a little up until that point, but I had just washed baby clothes/towels/blankets and got everything organized. Nothing major. Over the weekend, however, I had a couple of episodes.

Friday I stopped and got my car washed on the way home from work and since the place I like going to lets me use the vacuums for free, I thought, "What the heck?" and vacuumed the inside as well. I had a shiny, vacuumed car, but the dash and console were still dusty, which really, really bothered me. I pulled into our parking lot, grabbed some wipes out of Steve's trunk and before I even went up to our apartment, I Armor All-ed the whole inside -- including the door jambs.

Sunday night, I went out to run a small errand and when I came home, I decided to finally do something about the smudges on the front door. I'd noticed them a hundred times, but hadn't done anything about it. I grabbed the 409 and a rag and proceeded to scrub down the entire door on both sides. (I discovered the smudges were actually splotches of paint that didn't look any better after the scrubbing.) Then I remembered the bathroom door could use a little work, so I scrubbed that, and the cabinets . . . and the washer and dryer, and the window sill. Then I noticed the shower mat was looking a little dingy, so I threw it in the washer. With the 409 still in hand, I headed for the kitchen and cleaned off all the countertops, the stove and the sink.

By then I had the words to a Primary song in my head, "Saturday is a special day. It's the day we get ready for Sunday. . . " and thought that maybe I should have waited until Monday to do my little cleaning spree. I couldn't help it though, and I headed for the fridge, cleared everything out, wiped down the whole inside and threw away all the science projects. (Steve was really sweet and cleaned those out for me :))

Have I started nesting? Um, I think so.

Week 38 Appointment

Pretty routine. Baby's head down (yay!). Heartbeat's great. Next week they start the "fun" checks. She offered to do it today, but I really didn't feel like taking off my clothes. And I'm glad I opted not to because I had to sit in the examining room for about 15-20 minutes before the doctor came in. That's way too long to sit with a mere piece of paper covering your bottom half.

Reluctant Easter Pics

So, I finally dug up some pics from Easter and decided to share some of them. As you can probably tell, I wasn't in the mood to have my picture taken, which is why I added the one at the bottom where I look kind of happy.

My family came down and we had Easter dinner (lunch, I guess) at our place. My grandparents came down from Sandy, too. It was close quarters, but everything turned out well.

I thought if I closed my eyes, somehow I'd be invisible. The second one is of my mom and my grandpa. I think the "don't take pictures of me" attitude runs in the family :). I love the third one because of how my dad's sitting. It's how he always looks on the couch after a big Sunday dinner. My brother is on the right. I guess he had something really serious to say.



Here we have my sister blowing her cheeks up and sitting next to her is Jeremy. Jeremy's one of my brother's best friends. He might as well be my own brother because he's pretty much a part of our family. Finally, we have Steve looking pleasant in the right picture and me, well, not amused that my picture is being taken again.




Here's the bonus one where I look happy to be pregnant. I'm actually happy because I'm sitting in my favorite chair. (And I'm holding the remote, which doesn't happen a lot during basketball season.)

Week 37 Appointment

Everything looks good still. I mentioned last time that I was measuring a little small, and I was afraid that meant an extra week of my delightful condition, but my doctor assured me that it didn't. If I'm late, it means that this little girl isn't ready to come out -- not because of how I'm measuring. I tell her that she IS ready. So does Steve. I don't know if him getting out of a drill weekend will be enough to convince her, though. Dr. Wylie also told me that I probably shouldn't go to Vegas in two weeks. That's what I thought, too. My parents are heading down and wanted to pick us up on the way.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been working on getting certified to teach Suzuki piano. I grew up taking Suzuki, and I've wanted to teach piano for a long time but haven't had the chance lately. (I've only taught during two summers while I was going to Ricks, and I loved it!) And since that's the way I learned, I wasn't sure how to teach traditional piano.

It's slightly more intense than I thought it was going to be. They make you go to week-long classes in the summer for each book, but before you can even sign up for them, you have to send in a video audition of yourself playing a particular song. (Another reason why I'm glad I was a Suzuki kid. The song I had to play was Mozart's Sonata K331, which is in one of the books I went through.) That's what I did a few weeks ago, and let me tell you, it wasn't fun seeing a 50 lb heavier version of myself on tape. (Yep, we're up to 50 lbs now.) Anyhow, I heard back from them over the weekend, and they accepted my audition! Yay! That means we'll either be going to St. Louis or Oakland for a week this summer.

A Foreign Body

Easter updates will follow as soon as I go through the pictures we have and crop myself out of all of them. Ha.

The familiar pregnant-woman phrase, "I want my body back," is beginning to take on a whole new meaning for me lately. Of course I want my body back in the sense of fitting into my old clothes, having my energy level boosted back up, and not being kick-boxed from the inside. But there's a lot more to it than that. I knew my old body really well. I knew how much sleep I needed to function the next day, what to eat (or not eat) to keep myself feeling OK, I knew what medicines worked on me and which ones didn't, and I knew how long I could walk around a mall before I got tired. We're usually pretty tight, my body and me.

Being pregnant is like jumping into someone else's body and having to re-learn everything. Not only that -- when you start to figure yourself out, it could easily change over the next month, week or even the next day.

Case in point: Every year around this time (pregnant or not), I get really, really bad alleriges. Under normal circumstances I start popping Claritins and voila -- allergies averted. I may need asthma medication depending on the severity of my allergies, but those things seem to keep me in check. Lately, nothing keeps me in check. Claritin doesn't work. I hesitated popping a lot of different medications trying to find the "magic one", but I did try some nasal decongestants. I thought they worked one night, so I took them again the next night, and I woke up around 3 unable to breathe through either of my nostrils and unable to get back to sleep. That's been the routine for the past week. So now I walk around in constant, zombie-like state of congestion and sleep deprivation.

How much time left? Oh yeah, a MONTH. I better stock up on tissues.

Week 34 Appointment

I asked Dr. Wylie this time if it was weird that my knuckles hurt when I wake up in the morning. I think it has something to do with my fingers swelling, but she didn't seem to concerned, so I'm not anymore. I also asked her how I was measuring. Lately I've really hoped she'd grow fast and come early so I can be done with this, but unfortunately it's not going to work out that way. Not only am I not measuring big, I'm actually slightly smaller, which means she probably won't be making an early appearance.

Shucks.